“Don’t go, Wilhelm, don’t be angry with me.  You don’t know what I feel—­you are torturing me to death.”

Her sobs were so violent that she could not keep upon her feet, and sank on the floor in front of him.  He lifted her up and set her on a chair, and his own eyes were wet as he said: 

“I am not suffering less than you, Pilar, but the cup of bitterness must be drunk.”

“You do not love me,” she moaned.  “You have never loved me.”

“Do not say that, Pilar.  I have loved you, but it is our ill-luck—­”

“You have loved me, you say.  So you do not love me now?  Wilhelm, speak—­do you not love me any more?”

He tried to evade the question.  “You know, from the first, I did not want to come here.  My weak compliance is revenging itself upon me now.  You yourself only spoke of it as a trial; if I could not accustom myself to it you would not insist on my remaining.”

“You do not love me any more!  So that is your boasted German constancy of which you are so proud!  These are your vows which I took for gospel truth!”

“I have no recollection of having made any vows,” he retorted.  He was sorry for it the moment the words had left his mouth.

“That is true,” she answered bitterly; “you never promised anything.  You left me to do all the vowing.  It is unpardonable of me to reproach you, I have no claim upon you.  I forced myself upon you—­ why don’t you tell me so?  Shout it in my ears!  Despise me, kick me—­ I deserve no better.  I have been guilty of the deadly sin of loving you madly, and forgetting everything else in the world for that.  You are quite right to punish me for it.  And see how low I have sunk! see what my love has brought me to!  You may curse me, you may ill-treat me; I love you all the same, Wilhelm—­do what you will, I love you all the same.”

She was so distraught that she could not stay in the dining room.  With a sudden violent movement she grasped his arm and dragged him away with her upstairs to the bedroom, where she threw herself exhausted on the sofa.  Wilhelm stood before her, looking thoroughly crestfallen, and wishing devoutly that he had the dread hour behind him.  The silence frightened Pilar.  She raised her head, and said in a weak, changed voice: 

“It is all over, is it not?  Tell me that it was only a bad dream—­ tell me that you will not frighten me like that again.”

“Pilar,” he returned miserably, “I wish you would listen to me quietly.  You are generally so reasonable.”

“No, no,” she cried; “I am not reasonable—­I will not be reasonable.  I love you out of all reason.  I shall repeat it a thousand times, till you give up talking to me of reason.”

“And yet it is impossible for me to stay in this house.”

She straightened herself up, looked at him for a moment, and then said with unnatural calmness, as she wiped the tears from her eyes: